The Old Tea-Clipper Days Poem by Angus Cameron Robertson

I have sailed in old tea-clippers,
Full rigged clippers, lofty, trim;
Bounding o'er the laughing waters
With the wind abaft the beam,
And her lovely, snowy-white wings-
All a-pulling in the gale:
Now behold, she rolls to leeward,
Now she dips her weather rail.

I can see her slanting wet decks,
Green with slime amidships too:
I can hear old Bill, the bos'un
Cursing at our bully crew:
I can see each hairy visage
Laughing in the briny spray
Swinging on the topsail halliards,
Singing chanties wild and gay.

Oh! the rushing of the waters
As we haul and pull with glee,
Lashing, driving in our faces,
Filling seaboots to the knee,
With our soul and body lashings
Hauled full taut around the waist,
While the bos'un curse like thunder,
'Damn your eyes! Belay! Make Haste!'

We have split the hardy pantiles
With our sheath-knives thro' and thro;
And took out the crawling maggots
Ere we hashed them for the crew,
We have felt the pangs of hunger
As we made some cracker hash -
'Dandy-funk' and 'Spotted Harry,'
Mixed with sugar brown, a dash.

We have tacked and ran before it,
In the roaring forties - well -
We have wallow'd in the Tropics
Where the sun's as hot as Hell!
In a stark and stinking blizzard,
We have weathered old Cape Horn;
And we passed the 'Flying Dutchman'
With his topsails rent and torn.